Top of the State

Since Jon has a love of mountain climbing and making it to high mountain peaks, we thought that though it's not all that high, we'd go to the highest land point that Missouri has. So we drove 90 minutes south-west to Taum Sauk Mountain. We enjoyed seeing a new part of the state. We crossed a Koen Creek on the way too!

This sign is at the start of the paved trail.

I expected enough trail that I thought the stroller would be helpful. Jon made sure to keep the ride exciting for Koen by lifting the front of the stroller along the way.

MAYBE a tenth of a mile from the start of the trail, we came to this: The top of Missouri.

As you can see... the journey was exhausting.

Jon and Koen celebrate their achievement.
We laughed at how extremely short the trail was. We knew it wasn't going to be long or hard since it was much lower in elevation that what we're use to and it was a completely paved trail. But, we certainly did not expect it to be nearly as short as what this trail really was. Its probably equivalent to the distance that you would walk from the back of the parking lot into the store. haha

We saw another boulder close by that looked higher than the marked high point of the hill. So we thought we'd climb to the top of it just in case it was a tad higher.
Jon took a moment to meditate in the beautiful and peaceful environment.

This was a view-point down the road from the trail. Much of what we've seen in Missouri looks like this; on-going hills of trees. I often can not tell where more residential or commercial areas are when I get to the top of a hill because the trees hide it all.

After our lovely short walk, we enjoyed a small picnic. Though I felt so silly for having us drive an hour and half to walk such a tiny distance, we had a good time and we can now say that we've been to the top of Missouri.